Review of the Alesis SR-16 Drum Machine by Bernhard Crosby As a drummer, it is easy to have negative opinions of drum machines. However, i...
Review of the Alesis SR-16 Drum Machine by Bernhard Crosby
As a drummer, it is easy to have negative opinions of drum machines. However, it is crucial to incorporate technology into your studio, so enter the SR-16.
At least it will turn up for band rehearsal, will stay in time, and won't sleep with your girlfriend, even though it does have a big knob (more on that later).
Take it out...
The first thoughts are, 'whoa, this thing looks like it comes from the 80's'. The smooth black finish, little drum pads, and that darn knob. Power it up and you find out what it's all about. It features 233 drum sounds that can all be triggered by the 12 drum pads found on the SR-16. Select your preset drum kit and hit the pads, and you have your first beat.
The SR-16 also features pre-recorded drum loops, with most musical styles covered, and they are well put together. It is very easy to change the tempo, just hit the tempo up or tempo down buttons found on the right. To scroll through the preset drum kits you can either hit the 'up' arrow, or simply punch in the number of your preferred preset drum kit.
It is fairly straightforward to patch together your own song and conveniently the SR-16 has an 'A' and 'B' pattern. The 'B' is a slight variation of the 'A' pattern, perfect for a chorus or bridge section of a song. One of the nicest touches is the fill button; hit it at any time, best at the end of every fourth or eighth bar before a part chance and you get a random fill played. If you hit 'fill' once the pattern will automatically play the next pattern, i.e. if you're in part 'A' and hit fill, after the fill you'll be in part 'B'. However, if you hold the fill button down until after the fill has played, the same pattern will play as before.
Hit me baby...
There are 12 rubber pads on the SR-16, and this is how you trigger the drum sounds. I found that the pads needed a good whack to get a decent level, so enter the velocity adjustment page, change the velocity response, and off you go. Still, I didn't find the pads as responsive as some units I've tried. So I connected the SR-16 up to my controller keyboard via MIDI and triggered the sounds with the keyboard. The response was a whole lot better. Even though this drum machine has been designed to be used on its own, it almost works better as a sound module controlled by a sequencer (Cubase, etc) than stand-alone.
Although you don't always have the name of the kit on the screen, which would be preferable, the preset drum kits are listed in a document with the user manual and under the unit itself.
I also noted that the display has practically no backlighting. So if you're doing a live gig in a fairly dark venue you might have a problem seeing what's going on.
And what is that huge knob for? It's to control the master volume. Why you need such a huge beast to turn the volume up or down I don't know, it would be put to much better use if it acted as a scroll wheel to browse pages on the display screen.
The sounds that you get out of the SR-16 certainly aren't as good as some modern drum machines and they have an 80’s feel about them. You can hear the digital noise with each hit (especially the kick) and the lack of decay is sometimes painful. Which brings me to the main point about the SR-16; who will use it?
If you're a guitarist, maybe you're gigging with another guitarist or bass player, this unit is for you. It's dead easy to put together the preset drum loops or even record your own loops and put a backing drum track together. The kits range from sweet jazz to heavy rock to electronic. So for live use it's very useful indeed. If you're planning to use it in the studio you should maybe think twice. The quality of the sounds just aren't on par with recent software releases and sample CDs.
Beat it...
Fortunately the SR-16 offers you a few editing functions: pan, volume, pitch, and others. This means that you can edit each drum sound and mix the kit internally as if each drum were connected to an external mixing desk. The panning in particular on some of the drum kits is a bit excessive, but that can easily be rectified.
There are two pairs of stereo outs and a headphone output.
Would I buy one? Well it's not really suitable for the applications that I have, but as mentioned above, for the guitarist who is doing small gigs and wants some drum backing this would be a good drum machine to consider. Yes, it would be nice if you could see the drum kit names all the time, the display could be seen in the dark, and the sound quality was better. But if you're hooked up to your average venue PA system it doesn't really matter.
I just wish that it was battery operated so I could take it away with me and program rhythms anywhere.
Buy the Alesis SR-16 Stereo Drum Machine
A bit about the author:
Bernhard Crosby has an impressive studio set-up in North London, spends many hours programming drum loops and playing around with the latest studio gear. He too has a big knob.
As a drummer, it is easy to have negative opinions of drum machines. However, it is crucial to incorporate technology into your studio, so enter the SR-16.
At least it will turn up for band rehearsal, will stay in time, and won't sleep with your girlfriend, even though it does have a big knob (more on that later).
Take it out...
The first thoughts are, 'whoa, this thing looks like it comes from the 80's'. The smooth black finish, little drum pads, and that darn knob. Power it up and you find out what it's all about. It features 233 drum sounds that can all be triggered by the 12 drum pads found on the SR-16. Select your preset drum kit and hit the pads, and you have your first beat.
The SR-16 also features pre-recorded drum loops, with most musical styles covered, and they are well put together. It is very easy to change the tempo, just hit the tempo up or tempo down buttons found on the right. To scroll through the preset drum kits you can either hit the 'up' arrow, or simply punch in the number of your preferred preset drum kit.
It is fairly straightforward to patch together your own song and conveniently the SR-16 has an 'A' and 'B' pattern. The 'B' is a slight variation of the 'A' pattern, perfect for a chorus or bridge section of a song. One of the nicest touches is the fill button; hit it at any time, best at the end of every fourth or eighth bar before a part chance and you get a random fill played. If you hit 'fill' once the pattern will automatically play the next pattern, i.e. if you're in part 'A' and hit fill, after the fill you'll be in part 'B'. However, if you hold the fill button down until after the fill has played, the same pattern will play as before.
Hit me baby...
There are 12 rubber pads on the SR-16, and this is how you trigger the drum sounds. I found that the pads needed a good whack to get a decent level, so enter the velocity adjustment page, change the velocity response, and off you go. Still, I didn't find the pads as responsive as some units I've tried. So I connected the SR-16 up to my controller keyboard via MIDI and triggered the sounds with the keyboard. The response was a whole lot better. Even though this drum machine has been designed to be used on its own, it almost works better as a sound module controlled by a sequencer (Cubase, etc) than stand-alone.
Although you don't always have the name of the kit on the screen, which would be preferable, the preset drum kits are listed in a document with the user manual and under the unit itself.
I also noted that the display has practically no backlighting. So if you're doing a live gig in a fairly dark venue you might have a problem seeing what's going on.
And what is that huge knob for? It's to control the master volume. Why you need such a huge beast to turn the volume up or down I don't know, it would be put to much better use if it acted as a scroll wheel to browse pages on the display screen.
The sounds that you get out of the SR-16 certainly aren't as good as some modern drum machines and they have an 80’s feel about them. You can hear the digital noise with each hit (especially the kick) and the lack of decay is sometimes painful. Which brings me to the main point about the SR-16; who will use it?
If you're a guitarist, maybe you're gigging with another guitarist or bass player, this unit is for you. It's dead easy to put together the preset drum loops or even record your own loops and put a backing drum track together. The kits range from sweet jazz to heavy rock to electronic. So for live use it's very useful indeed. If you're planning to use it in the studio you should maybe think twice. The quality of the sounds just aren't on par with recent software releases and sample CDs.
Beat it...
Fortunately the SR-16 offers you a few editing functions: pan, volume, pitch, and others. This means that you can edit each drum sound and mix the kit internally as if each drum were connected to an external mixing desk. The panning in particular on some of the drum kits is a bit excessive, but that can easily be rectified.
There are two pairs of stereo outs and a headphone output.
Would I buy one? Well it's not really suitable for the applications that I have, but as mentioned above, for the guitarist who is doing small gigs and wants some drum backing this would be a good drum machine to consider. Yes, it would be nice if you could see the drum kit names all the time, the display could be seen in the dark, and the sound quality was better. But if you're hooked up to your average venue PA system it doesn't really matter.
I just wish that it was battery operated so I could take it away with me and program rhythms anywhere.
Buy the Alesis SR-16 Stereo Drum Machine
A bit about the author:
Bernhard Crosby has an impressive studio set-up in North London, spends many hours programming drum loops and playing around with the latest studio gear. He too has a big knob.
